Abuses ‘still rife’: 10 years on from the Bangladesh’s Rana Plaza disaster
The fight for safe conditions and fair pay in Bangladesh has not yet been won, campaigners are warning on the 10th anniversary of the deadliest disaster in the garment industry’s history.
On 24 April 2013, 1,134 people were killed and at least another 2,000 injured in the collapse of a factory building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where clothing was being made for international brands including Primark, Bonmarché and Canada’s Loblaw.
The owner of the Rana Plaza building remains in prison but the murder trial against him and others, including factory owners and local officials, continues to grind on almost seven years since charges were brought, with no one yet to be convicted.
Campaigners say workers in Bangladesh, which is the second-largest exporter of clothing in the world behind China, are still underpaid and can be harassed for being part of a union, while factory owners face sharp practices from brands such as delay payments, cancelling or dramatically reducing orders without notice.
Paul Nowak, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress in the UK, said: “Ten years after more than a thousand workers died in the Rana Plaza factory collapse, labour rights abuses are still rife in Bangladesh and many are still working in unsafe conditions.
“Relentless union campaigning secured important safety protections for factory workers. But many non-factory workers do not have the same protections.”
Moushumi Begum, who spent three hours trapped under the eight-storey Rama Plaza, said: “It all happened so quickly. I vividly remember every detail about that day, even though it was 10 years ago.”
After the building collapsed, Begum spent the next three hours fighting for her life. “Every second of those hours, I lay there praying to
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